LVMH to unite luxury brands under an e-commerce platform

By

Kat Higgins

kathrynhiggins@globalcitymedia.com

14 Mar 2017 , 12:00am

Luxury brand owner LVMH is lining up to become a major player in the blossoming luxury e-commerce market.

Sources have reported that the French luxury group plans to host all its brands on a new digital platform due to go live over the next few months. The initiative has been spearheaded by former Apple executive Ian Rogers, who joined LVMH in 2015 as the architect of its groupwide digital strategy. The group’s e-commerce presence will operate under the same banner as its Parisian bricks-and-mortar department store suite, Le Bon Marché.

Online acceleration

The move marks LVMH’s first major foray into the digital marketplace since the launch of its eLuxury platform in 2009, which subsequently gave way in 2009 as individual brand members opted to launch their own individualised platforms. Its planned re-entry to the world of e-commerce comes after online sales topped the $2bn mark at LVMH last year, now accounting for around 5.3 per cent of the group’s overall revenues. Management consultancy McKinsey & Company has predicted that online sales will climb to around 18 per cent of the global luxury market by 2025. E-commerce luxury grew four times as fast as offline sales between 2009 and 2014, but eased 2015 amid a (now recovering) slowdown in Chinese appetite for luxury goods.